hello my name is danica sock and you're listening to Catholic verses other so tell the listeners a little bit about yourself if you would please who you are what you believe and how you came to believe what you believe I'm from Newfoundland and Labrador and I grew up in Maine Labrador where I was brought up as an Iranian Christian which is a sect of Pentecost but underlying Leigh you might say unconsciously I grew up in any way culture where our spirituality is based off the man and we carried through but in terms of acquisition I grew up and was introduced to the Baha'i faith and that I practice overtly but I still hold to the other beliefs so Baha'i as far as I understand is very open to other religions right I think there are seven religions that they explicitly named that they're open to can you confirm that and can you name what the seven religions are there is a principle called unity in diversity they're a prerequisite of julie's diversity which includes religion and the major religions in the east as written in the very faith is Buddha Moses Christ so roster and Krishna as far as I can remember now but there are other religions like native spirituality and does not explicitly xs+ that's what we believe can you just talk about your earliest memories with religion please there's two parts to that the on the religious side you might say that my parents gave the moravian like our people were this sector of Pentecost was introduced to the laboratory from the mid 1600 I came from in Germany and it was ended up being established along of northern Labrador and we've been following it ever since but another side of I wouldn't say religion and I would say more spirituality and which forms our English culture and that's growing up off the land and you develop a sense of being identity and belief in the world view when you go past land and land is in natural sense underlying the spiritual and I grew up my father he was a guide and he used to bring up modern climate of northern Labrador and there were these mountains and that are called turned torn yet which in it that means place of the spirit and science says that these mountains are one of the oldest in the world so when I grew up around them they to me have a sense of an old souls or I have been in affected by that a lot and the other are I guess when I was in my mid-teens I was introduced to my oldest is by faith and I've been reading about it and I've been adhering onto it ever since was there any negative reaction from your family and friends when you chose to focus on Baha'i one of the things I like to believe that when natives like any which live off the land for thousands of years you start becoming part of the land you start becoming so spiritual that it becomes unconscious and like when demur Amiens came because any week I would think that they are so spiritual that one day we're introduced to the Bible they recognized the truth in the Bible and they accepted it and embrace it and then this is how my parents are reacted to the by faith they were open to it and they they were introduced you to some of the principles and ideas and they didn't disagree with it when I was growing up I was um forced to go to church and I I didn't like that at all and I heard him I made up my mind that when I was going to be old enough to act on my own choices that I would never go to church again and that's what I did and I didn't want anything to do with the outside world was school or Shakespeare or speaking English and but as growing up the influence from the outside world you have kind of had no choice and then when I was introduced to the by faith in form of a book by shoulder Finney called God passes by his English his writing was a really really superb and every change Kings my my mind of my heart and I look about English and so I start I try to read as much as possible and learn about words one of the things I like to say that in the culture had their own a deity and it's jesusí goddess named Sedna and she's the you might say the box of nature and she's in there mythical legend she's creator of the sea mammals and I like to think well you know outside myself that before Europeans came the Native belief has shared one spirit and then in this form of culture where I respect elders and pride in ourselves and the noble equality and love of Troezen respecting care and protection of the man and the animals and reference to the spirit world and my ancestors and I tried to share that as much as possible and I think that the world would benefit from it particularly the West and see the West is more material and I think that natives around the world in their own native beliefs is that they're very spiritual and so if we come together we can actually compliment and Lia's help meet and the other view is that the messengers of God in the other side the world were guessing were mainly men but if if you were native you could believe on this side of the world and the original West you might say is that an these messengers were rafinha and I think that overall they were supposed to be equals like the ida i in compliment each other be has helped me but we're our peoples decided the world was overrun and overwhelmed and subjugated by christianity now that it's really hard to believe in today to not only think about what how do you think about that we have such views let alone having a belief so my point of view i try to bring my native peace please to the present and bring it into the future without any discrimination from christianity or any other sacred belief how may I ask how old you are I'm 44 okay I'm wondering if you could just talk from your perspective as a middle-aged man about atheism what is it why is it popular today and what can we do to educate those who deny the very existence of the spiritual the supernatural and even of God himself how I think that you know European West sir they ended up becoming so material that they lost her way they lost theirs first away but the native people on this side before Europeans came they were there they kept their spirituality quite strong and looting that we keep this past and you feel we are quite strong about it and if you are too material you lose your way and I think this is what happened to an extent that no lose your sense of spirituality you effects your mind you you see a lot of Westerners the problem with their mind or a mentally-challenged meant a delayed because their mind is not connected so much without a anymore and we unfortunately the West has to learn the hard way a slow and painful way to find that original self again in your religion or for you personally do you think that God is one or do you think there are many gods can you just explain that from your perspective I see it as God thinking as a creator or the Great Spirit it's just like the Sun and the different names of different messengers are like the colors of the Sun you know they're different but they come from one source and let's say God we didn't we weren't used to or God we see more creator and a great space I see how did they reconcile the contradictions that exist for example among the different claims about who and what Jesus Christ was the historical person of Jesus Christ because the Muslims claim that he was not God and that he was not crucified he did not die and then the Jews claimed that he was not the Messiah but that he did die and then the Christians claim that he is God he is the Jewish Messiah and that he did die for our sins and he rose again and he's body and soul in heaven so there are lots of different contradicting views about Jesus Christ just in those three religions not to mention if we bring in Buddhism and all sorts of other worldviews so how does the Baha'i faith sit comfortably among all these different contradictions there's a high principle called a progressive revelation in the high faith claims that a different major religions around the world and came at different times as for specific reasons every thousand years so Buddha and Christ and Muhammad and Moses they all came at different times and about thousand years apart each and when they came and they came with new set of social laws I mean that the spirituality the basis or is always the same into extremely socially express it new laws were placed and these laws also laws that different religions they appear to contradict another pie each other or indifferent to each other but overall they're about different periods in different times that that would suit according to the capacity insensitivity of humanity at the time it's almost like going from family unit to try to see the state you know you have you need to apply different practical rules to four different stages according to what's being manifest I want to change gears a little bit here now and talk about evil the problem of evil what do you think evil is does it have any substance or reality or is it just a lack of goodness this is what the Catholic Church teaches that evil just is a falling away from being a falling away from reality of falling away from goodness because God like you said is that one source of everything that's good so that's the Catholic perspective on evil it doesn't have any substance is that your understanding at your Baha'i and your your general understanding of evil a body face is that there is no yield in nature but I guess the enemies and they were hosts from Katrine there was you and ever since and as being evil but in the very face they say that goodness is relative it's almost like mathematics it goes from one to infinity like one compared to two maybe less or evil or maybe one to ten one appears evil bad or less and 10 is better but it's all relatives and this it's like a person who could be having a hard time and not make a right moral choice but does he test he has some goodness and everybody is born pure and Noble and it's how you go up that makes a difference but overall goodness is evil they also say that evil is the absence of good and good is evidence of evil or that light is absence or darkness and darkness is an absence of light but overall there's no real evil it's really relegated how good you are what is the afterlife like for the Baha'i religion nor I like to use the analogy of what First Nations or Native people have been using for thousands of years is that they see this world the physical world as an expression of the spirit world like this world is like a room the mother's room and we're like women and their physical mothers were when we grow arms and legs and eyes and so on in a very perfectly organized wait so that one were born into this world we can live when we walk we can see we can explore and that's the same thing in First Nations view native views that is Falls like a room but a spirit or spiritual room where we are to acquire in the purpose is to acquire virtuous compassion Care spirituality experiment performance and when we may be reacquires like children acquire these things through playfulness petals and ranges to hardship and when we learn what hardship or raw we start becoming stronger and better people and then when we die physically we carry what we learned and what we acquired and into the next world to the spirit world in there that's why as many people I always try to and shared afraid that we here to grow spiritual eyes grocery ears raise your arms disappearance away so that you can carry neck strong be Lauren Hall so to speak in the next life do you envision being reunited with dead family members and stuff like that absolutely they just physically died in the soul is it's very much still alive like nothing had happened are being affected like you have a mirror i faces the Sun and the Sun like reflects in the mirror but the Sun is like the soul or the light that goes in the mirror in a mirror is like a physical being reflects spirituality or the holiness for one day mirror is broken the Sun does not destroy her light is still there or you might say that burden the cage the bird makeup isn't the spirit and the keys may represent a physical part when the cage is broken or open and it doesn't affect the bird it doesn't affect the soul is that free now this what you're saying reminds me of this ancient religion of Gnosticism where they claimed that the spirit is good and the body is evil and all material substances are evil relative to the spirit is this what you hold - yeah I think life is all about from single point it's progression we go from from rock to the plant to animal to human and our next step is spirits and we're learning to acquire this and when we are going to attach to the materials ideas like we're trying to go backwards when there's when returns supposed to be going forward and if we're going to attest in the material then we say that as evil it's not good but if we make progress we try to be detached from the material side which in this poor form is not bad we need to try such a soul free by crying spirituality or holiness what about the question of suicide is it evil and if so why like Church it's evil it's one of the worst evils I we're not I don't think we're supposed to kill ourselves I think it's supposed to be the responsible responsibility of the Creator he knows or she knows or ignores or his unknowable essence knows best what's best for us and if we commit suicide it's like we're going against the will of the creator but the Creator you can say is all merciful or forgiving you know compassionate we make mistakes and there are different reasons why in the suicide and it's complicated insensitive and I have a few ideas but those are my own and people have their own but overall I think we're supposed to as much as possible follow the will of the creator yeah this brings me to the idea of an eternal hell from which you cannot escape ever what do you make of this Catholic doctrine and what is your point of view I'm going to say to that in in our language in Inuktitut in English language there is no word for devil and in the Bayeux faith there is no evil hell is a relative term for heaven there's no really hell it's all relative to what is heaven like if you're attached to this world too much that's not good so you may say that is hell but if you're set free there's more expression of heaven as opposed to expression in Hell now the question arises when we talk about Hell is about morality if there is no difference in outcome for any to humans regardless of the choices that they make if both of them will be guaranteed to end up in heaven eventually then there is by definition no morality whatsoever you can literally do what you want and you will still end up in heaven because it's the only reality heaven is the only reality whereas in my religion Catholicism you can make bad choices that will lead to an outcome a permanent outcome which is horrible we call it hell it's separation from truth and goodness and beauty and everything and life and and and God himself so morality depends on having a permanent hell what do you say originally like I said we were born here pure and Noble and including that as morality and morality or Rawls supposed to serve the spirit and morality is supposed to serve the sacred like where we're testing our morality is tested for a purpose for divine reason just show that to learn what is behind the hardship why are we having a hardship and over all is the creator trying to teach us something like if we make a mistake and everybody makes mistakes like a child you know he's going to walk the road and sometimes he's going to fall over and scratches me and what he hasn't get up and keep on going and you can see greens vision so you know where you're going it's good to have an immediate plan early so you know where you're going and put those two together but sometimes and those don't coincide all the time so we waver and we fall but the idea is to get up and keep going and things will be better but you admit that in your worldview everyone ends up in heaven eventually absolutely in people in need no fear no shame it's like being born into this world you know in the one we were in our mother's womb everything was very very limited and dark and ignore about the next world and no idea no comprehension no imagination nothing really with real small sense of it like a mother's voice in calling loving voice and sound a little voice within yourself and calling to take this is better that you would make this choice and when you're into the next world like in this pearl walls like everything is greater in two spaces and brighter and there's different things maybe different creatures I don't know like here we didn't know one we used our mother who we didn't know about plants and animals in the sky and then when windows broke well we might discover everything's will never leave that could exist more beautiful what about abortion is abortion permissible for you and I think well in the value eighties says we try to fear from abortion as much as possible but sometimes there are circumstances that that can't be helped and it's not the fault of the woman like maybe she was raped and she has a right not conscious choice to whether or not she wants to keep the baby or that maybe she's extremely mentally ill and she can't take care of herself or take care of the baby maybe the baby can be born and taken away but under it's under extreme circumstances that abortion is allowed okay and there's a connected idea which is the morality of sexuality what is sexuality for you and what is the morality that's connected with sexuality sexuality is supposed to be an expression they're carrying on life on creating more creation and that is expressed in the form of sex which is very very sacred and very deep very intimate and very very sacred and when it's guided in the right way it can discuss very beautifully like one people like the physical side is a in overall categorically a counterpart of the Spirit and when we express herself physically were expressing a sense of spirit and when we express this physical side more properly than than spirit or holiness is expressed a lot more can you just tell me a little bit about your day-to-day spiritual life how do you pray and what kinds of prayer do you engage in as a native person like in the West like you have a problem you vote psychologists or counselor software diagon office and talk about it and yes maybe upon healing but my form of healing as a native person is following my culture you know gone to elders talking to them you know I have a anyway plumb elected it's called a hell out and it's very sacred to us is hollow and deep and beautiful and sacred and clear Christine and resonates I think it necessarily resonates with the soul like every other native have their own taken beliefs and expresses with their own instruments they had their own drum they have their own ceremonies rituals in circles in circles these are forms of healing for me so I think about I try to think about these things on a daily basis and try the promotor to the world as much as possible like for me personally I have an affinity for crows and cold mud like my spirit sign done unusual for need is to have what they call my helping spirit and it could be expressed as symbols not symbols like a certain animal Minds like I think is crow so I carry crow feather on my chest is Antonia equivalent to Christian crafts and as a Baha'i we have certain explicit ordinances like we read the writings in the morning in the evening and we say a prayer at least once a day and we recently since 2000 is repeat the word its person Aloha which means out I'll go ahead go easily repeated nine to five times and that's part of my daily living but overall I'm just like any other person I'm a human being yeah yeah but I am more attached to anyways because we have our akin to each other ever and standing of our history but I love meeting people and mean in French and talking people won't become more educated and smiling whatever is just being simple how do you deal with aggressive people and people that are angry what is your method for that I just treat him with a nobility and like there's a word illiterate sometimes you know you know - the Nick deterrent has more than one meaning it could have two millions or new nuances of different meanings and one of them to me like this various words for spirit and one of them means support and also means fun no identity overall when we look at a person overall in the end we're going to be the same you have a soul your noble or tree we have free will and I think part of an attribute of anyway today or native people today is that they become so spiritual over a thousand years that has become a bit unconscious so we spirituality keepers and nobility and walk around with sense of warmth and weakness and then when people people will naturally respond to that when people have a light and they are attracted to the light and if it's intense and it's all good it's okay but overall people in the end are the same can you talk a little bit about the arts music visual art dance how important is that for ritual and for connecting with the spiritual I find it very interesting that you could say the other side of the world is more let's say scientific or material and on this side it's more spiritual and artistic I think on on the your importance is on the same level is just how they're expressed at a different like is really odd like when I'm just saying telling a story or ensuring a lesson and they did a lesson or a teaching they say that it sounds like a poem well that sounds like a story but I don't really think in those terms I just expressed more they being taught and what I and they say art and so be it and if they say science or whatever so be it but it is a facet of truth mmm true this month's is how is expressed can you just talk about suffering what does it mean what is the spiritual meaning of suffering for you and how should you best approach personal suffering that's the thing any hardship and has a spiritual meaning overall or at his faces or in its original self and when it's expressed properly like people had different problems like I said the Dixons like or they have cancer or they have a they fell down broke their back and these all these hardships and suffering has overall purpose like destiny how is has a reason and we may not see it in the immediate sense and we might react to it badly sometimes it's due to this new age where there are new set of problems that we haven't been introduced to and maybe we're not so used to resolving them which because it's new or no it's all a learning process and you can't make any real discrimination one problem to another have you been overwhelmed by suffering at any point in your life where you lost touch with your spiritual principles I wouldn't say that I lost like like I said earlier my dad used to bring up bring me up to these mountains and he hadn't also and I carried it ever since and in native world you might say that we have a sense of being as whole and spiritual and then but in the world is not like that it's not humanly perfect you know when I came to st. John's 1994 I it was a whole almost like a whole new world to me like things were bigger faster louder but in more material and but socially it was much more isolating and and never like I don't suffer from clinical depression but I thought I'd suffered from social depression like the world here is very different like you don't know your neighbors you don't say I to people on the road you don't you don't see children playing around you know you don't have like people don't think spiritually not connected to the nature that's all this this is the kind of suffering that I'm going through but it doesn't mean that my spirituality and my soul is gone yesterday was put in a different situation where I couldn't be expressed as much like I felt I was on the spiritual path by myself and then nobody was walking with me so that I gave me a hardship what role does education play can we teach children and young adults and even full-grown adults to change their way of thinking when like I think the soul is how it always naturally knows where to go but if we don't pay attention to it we start to get lost and like it's always too so as I was trying to find his compass point you know everything in nature has a direction and it's perfect he knows where the goal and he's courting but by itself through the creator of one when we don't follow their goal we get lost and we get hurt and when you are connected to that original self with your soul your spirit and you start to find your way and it could be as simple as making a right choice like you can the choice can be very hard to make or like saying that don't go to this person downloaded a person don't use don't do that and it's up to us well not to our or free world and that we're going to do what's up when it's hard to do overall we can be guided on a daily basis in moment-to-moment whether you're a child or an elder doesn't matter where we have songs in this world we have an opportunity grow hold on the only basis or the spiritual basis we're not tough like later I cannot leave itself alone and cut off itself and creator is just impossible is the same with humanity with morality in your native culture is there pressure to marry to have children to have grandchildren and this sort of thing and if so have you felt that pressure and what's your love life been like and anyway culture we have a very strong bond social bond underlying bond and we value everyone everyone has a role there's a structure to our culture and they're going as a role and the family their family who expressed is very good expression of it but not necessarily it was pressured I mean it would be nice and to have a wife children and so on but it's not free it's not prearranged like before the world has changed and so we're open to different stuff but like the way the word anyways means to people doesn't matter who we are know how important is the family unit to the psychological and spiritual health of people in the West people that don't have a firm tradition of the elders and the wisdom of the elders and connection to the to the land how important is that family unit because it seems to be breaking down with divorce and contraception and abortion and all these sorts of pressures I guess the family unit could be expressed and not like in so much nonsense by how it was know of world order but you were lower orders and being learned and what definition of family units changing or being renewed and it's connected to everything pretty much ladies we say that the family Union is a miniature nation and see everything natural is progressive and can start with a family but it goes from there what are dreams do they have any spiritual significance for you and your worldview personally yeah they come it's a proof of an decide a world besides this one maybe we maybe between the physical in the spirit world it's kind of our connection like a reflection of a palpable water reflecting light and you see from the bottom you see in what comes to the surface of the sea is what you see from the bottom however every reflects maybe a certain message specific messages for you to acquire and certain like develops plants in the ocean certain plants or insects growing towards it and learning like personally when I was young I only my genes were only sounds no in the dark and I asked the community water and myself to honoring the Creator to have two dreams or my dreams started becoming visible black and white and then it's like colors are coming and noise became more acute and the colors became more invisible and it became so I'm livid that like exams like well myself to to always all staged by needed to but I do value dreams in a very spiritual way because I think that's another way of connecting to their Creator and you know in your sleep and in samus the lessons could be more clear than when you might learn in the day to day life because you're not injured by this world you know the Natalia here's your cute ass your body is not it's an inert state and but your soul is still active and your soul is open and vulnerable whether you know to say whether you like it or not and because it's a way for the Creator to get in touch with you and learn certain things the right shape or certain images and that comes in the form of dreams what about fasting does the Baha'i religion or the native spirituality recommend abstaining from food during certain periods of the Iker the month of the year native people a very strong attachment to the belief of having fast when you are on a spiritual quest like a new Congress where they have a power once a year and the there's no alcohol or drugs illicit drugs allowed on the power grounds and they do have sweat lodges and they encourage and promote fastings formal purging get away from being a test material things too much in a way to purify your body and to get more in touch with his spirit to commune with it so the Baha'i said they do have I mean I'm like a month of fasting as a time before the power new year which is which starts on the first day of spring and month you might say but if it's controlled fasting in a sense that people do not consume anything from sunrise to sunset but after that you can eat in to water and a month in the bahá'í calendar calendar is 19 days so people who who are buys I encourage to have a fast but again guided like people who are too old you know did not encourage necessarily to have a fast or so any lady who is pregnant or someone who's sick or child isn't agent mature is 15 and between 15 and I think it's so many times I'm not sure but fasting is holy and sacred encourage do you have sacred books or one sacred book or do you revere the Bible or the Quran or both or what can you talk a little bit about sacred books holy books um I went to presentation and seminar we're different variations gave prison presentations on different views universe welcome chief First Nation chief and he said that he's never had a Bible in his life but that down on the Bible he knew I was the one he was standing on so so we see creation and analogy to the Bible is equally sacred and holy but for me personally like I go to the high ratings a lot not so much on a religious quest I can not out of exclusivity Ocwen and whatever but more to learn how to express myself like dad spiritual views and I really take Kuwait and also just to learn English because they're their writings you can say impeccable and different in different ways into the level so I try to learn English express myself as much as possible he's your own native language flourishing and growing or is it on its way out or does it go up and down all the commonly above but overall it's progressing with technology we have outlets where we can have it recorded and it needs to be recorded as much as possible because the ancient language and all the wisdom and it could be taught by elders and I were able to learn the youth are able to learn through this technology or overall where people are becoming more expensive and you know it's becoming better are you fluent in your native tongue I have basic ability to specific outwardly but I know it's more intuitively then on a technical level because like other native people and they didn't have computers or a couple years or tape recorders we're learning through or observation and listening and so we pass it on from one mind to another in one heart or another so we get more of a feel for carats or personality it's more unconscious and the way you behave day to day so always at the end of my interviews I always like to ask my guests to give a little positive message of hope so just to wrap up the interview what do you think you might be able to say to anyone that might be out there listening now I'm a storyteller and a drum dancer painter actor and so on and but one of the things I really find invaluable is the story about their first Inuk shook and I don't know if you were to know other looks Lucas it is a father lobster that's like a person on top of a hill and it's like a used for guidance you give you a direction where home is where people are when the animals are those are practical reasons but there's also a mythical legend behind it and the story overall how the elixir came to be studied ended up being a symbol and reminder of the spirit but I also want and I can send you the story by email or share it another time for your podcast because it is in can be a long story but overall with the Inukshuk is a symbol of creation and when you attached mythical the legendary side being a symbol in mind or spirit I'm trying to say is that electric is now that is not made of just one size one shape they use different kind of rocks you know big rock small rocks doesn't matter they're all very equally important and it's like a younger young or old person male female and so on the gate like each rock as a role and when they come together you know United with their differences and when they come together it's a noble soul they can form a sacred circle or structure like a you have a big boulder you see if I'm afar but when you look close to the pebble that's holding up their Boulder so all these no digging sizes of rocks is I'm like a symbol that everybody you know whether you're young or old rich or poor white or black and we all have a role wrong important we're all here for a reason and we're all equally important and there will last forever and when we remember that we know where they come from where we stand where we can go so proud of who we are United not be afraid of each other because overall this is kind of ironic thing that I think that humanity is the only creature in the universe of creation is divided now me divided against nature but unto itself and so try to remind no we have a place in the world and it's just all important only the Kobayashi Luke nakamise wrong I seem a little we hit the mat in hockey chemistry artiste I'm just saying that my heart is happy and I'm thankful and I love you all and I hope you do good and take care of yourself